Bowness on Windermere
BOWNESS-on-WINDERMERE see also COCKSHOTT POINT and WINDERMERE entries
BOWNESS-on-WINDERMERE: Flying school site
Operated by: Windermere Hydroplane School (Operated by The Lakes Flying Company)
Location: Bowness-on-Windermere
Manufacture: Messrs Borwick & Sons (1910 to ?)
Maintenance/repair: Messrs Borwick & Sons (1910 to ?)
Period of operation: 1910 to ?
NOTES: Several influential people in the Royal Navy had been following aviation developments from 1911 at least. In January 1912 Rear-Admiral Troubridge recommended that 20 officers be given flying instruction, proposing that those who could not be accommodated at EASTCHURCH, (KENT), should be instructed at either the Bristol School, (BROOKLANDS?), or at the Windermere Hydroplane School.
An advertisement in The Aeroplane of November 23rd, 1914, showing a photograph of the Lakes Monoplane gives a lot of useful information. The sort of presentation used in those days is hard to replicate today, but I’ll do my best. It read like this;
So typical of this period, there was no regulatory ‘Advertising Standards Agency’ in those days, the claims made were highly exaggerated to say the least. In modern terms they were all a bunch of amateurish fools at best with none of them involved knowing much at all about flying. Yet, in their day - a top notch operation. This does of course illustrate very well how aviation developed so quickly. Those involved nearly always took severe risks almost daily, and very often died in their attempts. These risks, obviously well known, didn’t seem of much concern at the time. The ideas about ‘risk management’ came about many, many years later.
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